Run Crooked
by Mottsnave
Summary: "Your mum sent you. Mums don't know what to do. Our blood runs crooked."


**Run Crooked**

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 _Different_ , well, she knew it. She supposed her folks knew it first. When she'd wake up from dreams in a rage and tear her pillow to shreds in the night. When she'd bend her spoon in two without trying. The way she'd watch her brother's pet rat in its cage, cracking her knuckles. The way her mustache began to sprout when she was nine. _That_ was the last straw.

Her mother had firmly shut her in the lav with her father for a shaving lesson while she made several floo calls. When she stepped out, lip stinging, not-so-little Millicent was given an overnight bag and bundled straight through the floo to her grand-aunt's estate.

She had been there before for family reunions, and it was a bit like a reunion now. Her cousins dragged her out to the garden to play "Monster Island," Millicent being the monster, of course. She roared at them and chased them until her aunt called them all in for it being too dark outside. Too dark? It was just getting good to Millicent, but if she stayed out on her own there would be no one to chase until they shrieked. She dragged herself in behind the rest.

Auntie Syb was herding Charlotte and Miles and Florabelle upstairs to wash, but she seemed to take no notice of Millicent at all. She was left in the darkening hall. But not quite alone, not quite; there was something moving, somewhere. Millicent could hear it, even if she couldn't smell it, yet. There it was; the narrow door beside the broom cupboard was opening. Uncle Denton's shaggy head leaned out.

"Your mum sent you. Mums don't know what to do. Our blood runs crooked."

He disappeared back through the narrow door. The door was left open. Well, Millicent didn't need to be _told_. She followed. There wasn't much light in the corridor beyond, but Millicent found that she could see well enough, in a comfortable silvery way. Uncle Denton's shoulders were brushing the walls ahead, and then around a corner, into a strange long room with half-shuttered windows.

"You know our blood?"

Millicent shook her head.

"You ever feel your skin stiffening up in the sun? Flakes off like clay?"

Millicent shook again.

"Lucky. You'll burn though, if you don't cover up."

Uncle Denton was dragging an oversized tome off a shelf and let if fall open on the table.

"S' not like blue eyes, red hair, from the mother and father passed down to the child. Our blood runs crooked."

It was an old family tree, and there she was, Millicent Bulstrode, penciled in at the bottom next to her brother Laurence. Uncle Denton gave her name a jab, then ran his long nail angling back towards his own name the next branch over. Then he zigzagged back through the generations, pausing at a name here and there, each on a different branch, until he stopped at a much older entry: _Thomas Merrifield Bulstrode, 1631 – 1702, m. Trond Half-Troll, ? - ?_.

"Crooked. Not from the mother and father to the child. Troll blood don't want to be bred out, so it skips around. So your mum doesn't know how to handle it." He looked at the entry where his finger rested. "Always thought he must have had strange tastes."

He turned on Millicent with an appraising look. "You and me, we're the lucky ones. The troll blood landed on us."

 _Half-troll_ , that explained it. But what did that make her? It had been generations ago, but if the blood didn't breed out, was she half-troll too? Or quarter? Or did it even matter? She was _part_ troll, sure enough.

"Some things, all right, you can listen to the blood. So you don't stiffen up in the sun, stay out of it, yeah? Or cover up."

"Yeah."

"You like things that crunch?"

Millicent nodded enthusiastically.

"Mums think we'll choke on a bone. None of us'd ever choke. You eat your bones. Good for you. Get your mum to give you the chicken carcass when she's done with it."

Millicent cracked her knuckles and nodded. She'd like that.

"Now, there's times you _can't_ listen to the blood. You've got to shut it right up. What it tells you to hunt and run down, it's up to you to say no. It can't rule you there. Look."

He opened a cupboard and brought out a long metal box. The blood-rich smell of iron filled the room. Inside was a knotty wooden club, handle all smooth where you could grip it comfortable. With its heavy knot head it would swing well. Uncle Denton pulled a long, wide strip of leather from under the club, a belt. It was all studded with white beads. Millicent touched it carefully. Not beads, teeth.

"Those days are gone, it's not for us, right?"

Millicent looked up from the fascinating belt. Uncle Denton was looking at her sharp.

" _Right?_ "

"Right."

"You and me'll have an oath."

They laid hands on the iron box and swore not to let their blood rule them.

Two years later, and it was still hard sometimes. When her cat caught some little creature, she would rest her head close and listen to the crunching. And when that runt Malfoy looked her over slow and said "Bulstrode? I don't know that name…" in that poncy way of his, she couldn't help staring back at his eggshell skull. Mustn't crack it, however much he asked for it. And in the Great Hall at dinner, when she asked for the bread and that arse Zabini said "you sure you want that? They could make some with ground-up bones for you." She wouldn't do anything more than hold up her hand and curl it into a fist and say "you sure you want to say that? Could give you a bunch of fives." Nothing more, because clubs and teeth weren't the way anymore, no matter how the blood called to her. Chicken bones would have to be enough.

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A/N: Just a little character study here. It could be companion piece to the story Inconclusive Evidence and Millicent's brief appearances in The Clear Cut and The New Skin.


End file.
